


when you breathe

by kiden



Series: music from the motion picture "it" [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21550423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiden/pseuds/kiden
Summary: "He’d been the first to try running, but Richie stays in Derry long after the rest of the Losers have gone."
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: music from the motion picture "it" [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641745
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	when you breathe

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first reddie fic i've done so idk be nice

_ (in a way i can’t return)  _

He’d been the first to try running, but Richie stays in Derry long after the rest of the Losers have gone. The memory of their childhood goodbyes is still hazy, lost in the long stretch of years and the way Derry eats you up from the inside out. But It is gone now, and with every passing moment the days that lived dormant inside Richie are coming alive again, harsh Maine winters, rainy springs that smelled of dirt and grass, and hot days that lasted months under the long summer sun.

Sometimes he drives his car right to the edges of town. Idles at the limits, foot bouncing on the break, but he can’t bring himself to go. Bill and Mike and the rest, they all say the same thing: None of them are forgetting this time. Nothing is fading away. At least not the good parts. And maybe that’s why they get to keep them, now. Maybe there are better things to hold on to, this go-round. 

Richie’s not so sure he feels the same way. 

The thing is, how could he ever have forgotten about Eddie? 

He’s there when Richie wakes up, when he brushes his teeth and takes that first shot of Bourbon to clear his head. Eddie is everywhere, on the other side of Richie’s bed every night, a tangle of their limbs in a hammock, his forehead pressed to Richie’s shoulder, solid and warm and breathless. He’s a ghost living inside Richie’s body. 

Richie idles at the Derry limits and feels terrified if he leaves, even for a second, he’ll lose Eddie all over again. Maybe not right away, but slowly in the way time takes everything. He’ll forget his eyes and his voice and the sly upturn at the corner of his mouth and how fucking good he was, how loud and strong and brave, brave,  _ brave _ in a way Richie is only now just learning how to be. If he leaves he’ll forget how much of a fucking little shit Eddie was and how much he liked that about him. How it grew and changed and turned into love, in a way only a kid knows how to love.

Two initials that could be any two people in the world, but was theirs, belonged to them, carved in the side of the kissing bridge.

How that immature, shit-brain kid love continued to grow inside him, untended to, buried so deep Richie couldn’t reach it, and turned into something realer. The pain and love and adoration and impossibleness of it even bigger, and with sharp biting teeth. Something he’d forgotten to remember until he saw Eddie again, and that thing inside him shifted and pushed forward and breathed again, and he felt all at once terrified and whole.

If Richie leaves Derry, Eddie will be gone for good. Even if he remembers him. Even if Richie remembers Eddie every single day, for the rest of his goddamn motherfucking life, Eddie will always be gone. Now forever. Now for good. 

_ Beep beep, Richie.  _

He’s getting carried away again. Eddie would say, beep beep, Richie. 

“I love you, Eds” Richie says, everyday. Once he’d been sure the dead just know, that when you die you know everything anyone ever thought about you. He imagines Eddie laughing but he knows that isn’t right. Eddie wouldn’t have laughed at him. Not for this. 

Maybe Eddie would have done something else - 

Maybe he understood. 

And they could have, perhaps, if It hadn’t hollowed them out. Taken everything. 

Tomorrow, Richie thinks, he might step on the gas all the way back to California.

What he knows for sure, now, is the world is larger and way fucking stranger than he’s thought for the last thirty years. There’s unspeakable darkness and somewhere, he has to fucking believe it, unimaginable light. Equally as beautiful as the ugly, monstrous things Richie has seen. And wherever that place is, that’s where Eddie must be. 

Swaying quietly in a hammock not big enough for two, but they can make it work, just like they used to. They’re both waiting.


End file.
